I've been experimenting with cream cheese lately, mostly because I had some extra left over from creating and testing recipes for Philadelphia Cream Cheese at JoyOfKosher.com. (You can find the recipes here, where there are recipes also from Tamar Genger and Jamie Geller).

But also because the Jewish holiday of Shavuot is coming and this particular holiday usually involves a lot of cream cheese.

I've made several cheesecakes. You'll read about them here soon.

But I decided to make a pound cake too. With the addition of cream cheese, this plain old cake is outrageously dense, moist and rich.

You don't need to add frosting, powdered sugar, any sort of glaze, accompaniments of any kind like ice cream or fresh fruit. Although, of course, none of those would hurt.

But this one is good just the way it is.

Cream Cheese Pound Cake

1-1/2 cups butter

8 ounces cream cheese

2-1/2 cups sugar

6 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 teaspoons grated lemon peel

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Grease a 10-cup bundt pan. Beat the butter and cream cheese together in the bowl of an electric mixer set at medium for about 2 minutes, or until well blended. Add the sugar gradually and beat for about 2 minutes or until thoroughly incorporated. Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl occasionally to keep the batter smooth and uniform. Add the vanilla extract and lemon peel and stir them in. Add the flour, baking powder and salt and beat the ingredients for about 1-2 minutes or until smooth, uniform and well-blended. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 1-1/2 hours or until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean.